Nation Profile
THOUGHT LEADERS
‘The People of China Deserve Better’ Congressman Chris Smith’s long war against human rights violations
T
MELVIN SOTO-VÁZQUEZ/CONSERVATIVE PARTNERSHIP INSTITUTE
he Chinese Communists game the system,” Rep. Chris Smith said. “People are afraid to stand up to them.”
In this episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek discusses human rights and China with Smith, a representative of New Jersey’s 4th district. For the past four decades, Smith has been one of Congress’s most vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the U.S. policies that have enabled the regime’s abuses—from forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners to genocide of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. JAN JEKIELEK: I want to
talk to you about how we got to this place where the Chinese regime has hosted the 2022 Olympics and is kind of laughing at the world about the egregious genocides and human rights violations there. It wasn’t always like that. REP. CHRIS SMITH:
You’re absolutely right.
52 I N S I G H T March 18–24, 2022
There was always an understanding of the human rights abuses, for example, by the Soviet Union. But with China, there’s a double standard, this inability to understand that the Party is vicious and cruel. It uses torture to make people compliant, to punish and kill them. They use it against the Falun Gong, Christians, Buddhists, Uyghurs—any political dissidents. And we’ve enabled them. On May 26, 1994, Bill Clinton de-linked human rights from trade. That’s when the
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.).
